Catalog Description: Literary criticism and theory from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance through the eighteenth century to, but not including, Kant.

Engl 515 explores some of Chaucer’s best works from early in his career (The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls) to late (The Canterbury Tales). We will consider the issue of textual survival from a manuscript culture to a print culture, and attend to two critical issues: Chaucer’s use of sources and models (including his own work) and recent advances of New Historicism and gender studies. Throughout the term we will be animated by the question of love in one form or another.
Course workload: Memory work, class discussion, postings to our class discussion site, a class presentation, and a paper (12-17pp.).

Texts:

• Benson, Larry D. The Riverside Chaucer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Capellanus, Andreas. The Art of Courtly Love. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
• Miller, Robert P. Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Meisel, Anthony and Del Mastro, M.L. trans. The Rule of St. Benedict. New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1975.

‘Henceforth this isle to the inflicted be/ A place of refuge, as it was to me:/ … On my retreat, let Heav’n and Nature smile./ And ever flourish the Enchanted Isle.’ So Prospero in the Dryden-Davenant adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest bids farewell to the island. Nineteenth and early twentieth century critics like Hazelton Spencer and George Odell measured adaptations like this one against what they considered to be ‘original’ Shakespeare texts and found them ‘defiled,’ almost ‘like a rouged corpse—a thing too ghastly to conceive of.’ More recently, adaptations have been studied as products of particular social, political, or theatrical conditions, or as examples of implicit Shakespearean criticism. We will concentrate on adaptations of a select group of plays— Macbeth, Henry V, The Tempest, King Lear, and Hamlet—which will provide us an opportunity to consider the notion of an ‘original’ Shakespeare text, to reconsider various explanations for the existence of multiple versions of some of his plays, to examine some Restoration and eighteenth century adaptations, and to consider motives behind current adaptations of Shakespeare in the theatre, on film, and in the culture at large.
Requirements. Collaborate with a colleague in leading a discussion on one of the scheduled seminar topics. Write a critical essay on any subject related to Shakespeare adaptations (any period--any medium). The course is adaptable to a wide variety of interests and methodologies.
Books: Course Pack + your own edition of Shakespeare’s collected works. If you do not own an edition, you might find an older one at a used book store. For our purposes, the best student editions are Riverside, Bevington, Pelican, and the old Penguin. The Norton is useful for the parallel texts of Q1 and F1 of King Lear. Avoid editions that do not discuss how their texts were constructed or which have no notes.

In Britain, as elsewhere, the revolutionary period was an era of widespread debate and experimentation in the field of education. This was likewise the period when the notion of “literature” as a tool of education took on much of its current meaning, and when distinctly modern theories of reading began to be formulated. We will begin by looking at some of the pedagogical background of the era, from Locke and Rousseau to the Dissenting Academies and the Madras system. We will then move on to a selection of texts representing these educational debates—both theoretical formulations such as Rousseau’s Emile and Wollstonecraft’s Vindication and narrative accounts of childhood development contained in early Bildungsromane such as Fleetwood, Frankenstein and the Prelude. We will be considering how these various texts played out contemporary educational debates and responded to the highly charged political climate in which they were written.
Texts will include: Rousseau’s Emile, Wollstonecraft’s Vindication, Godwin’s Fleetwood, Wordsworth’s Prelude, Shelley’s Frankenstein, and a few more (still to be determined), along with a reading packet. Course requirements will include outside research into one of the educational theories being discussed in class, and one or more papers on the primary texts in the course.

Texts:

• Richardson, Alan. Literature, Education and Romanticism. [0-521-60709-4]
• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. Basic Books. [0-465-01931-5]
• Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications. Broadview. [1-55111-088-1]
• Godwin, William. Fleetwood. Broadview. [1-55111-232-9]
• Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Norton. [0-393-96458-2]
• Byron, Lord. Don Juan. Penguin. [0-14-042216-1]

In the 19th C. India as distant colonial resource moved into closer imaginative proximity and significance for Britain and its literature as Anglo-India—and this continued through the decades of the 20th C. before Indian Independence. Cultural exchanges multiplied over their material base in economics. Readings will be drawn from: selected essays by J.S. Mill on India, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King,” Kim, and selected stories and poems, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and (time permitting) R.K. Narayan’s Mr. Sampath, The Printer of Malgudi. We will trace developments through stages: 1) Political economy and the liberal agenda to the Indian Mutiny of 1857; 2) After the Mutiny—the Great Game and Afghanistan; 3) Partition of Bengal, Boycott, Indian Nationalism at the turn of the century; 4) Pre-Independence of 1947. Readings will be set in historical context—drawing especially on Burton Stein; in context of secondary literary selections (limited scale) covered by report—drawing from Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Dion Boucicault; and in context of selections (limited scale), some covered by report, from postcolonial theory and criticism—drawing from Homi Bhabha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Bernard Cohn, Javed Majeed, Ashis Nandy, Benita Parry, Jennifer Pitts, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Gauri Viswanathan, Robert Young, Lynn Zastoupil. Film versions of narratives by Kipling, Tagore, and Forster enter the framework of the course. Requirements: initiation of discussion of a primary text; report on materials not read by all; on-going seminar contribution; 12-15pp. seminar paper.

The aim of this course will be a complete reading of Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Students will be responsible for a class presentation on one section of the work and for an essay of 5,000 words or more, typically an exegesis of one section of the book.

Texts:

• Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press. [978-0198245971]

Corporeality and Ideology: Representations of the Body in 19th Century American Art and Writing

A study of how the body as represented in nineteenth-century American writing and visual culture is often fraught with ideological presupposition, while sometimes emerging more provocatively as a site of challenged representational codes. Issues addressed through specific case studies of bodily representation and display will include race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, citizenship and class. Materials explored will include prose fiction (for example, weird mutations in standardized , white male physiognomy in Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” or body and gender in “Life in the Iron Mills,” The Awakening, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”); poetry (especially selected poetry by Walt Whitman ); Currier and Ives lithography; photography; and painting (with emphasis on bodies and faces in selected works by Eastman Johnson, Lilly Martin Spencer, David Gilmour Blythe, Elihu Vedder, and Mary Cassatt). To supplement our study of the body in nineteenth-century American writing and visual culture, we’ll address theoretical and critical works by Henri Bergson, Elaine Scarry, Mary Russo, Mikhail Bakhtin, and others.

This class will provide students with an opportunity to explore one of the most famous, controversial, influential, yet least read texts in the canon of Anglo-American modernism, Ezra Pound’s Cantos. Was he a fascist? Yes. He says so. Repeatedly. Be ready to transcend “gotcha” criticism and start asking difficult questions about the relationship between high art, capitalism, humanism, warfare, and globalism. Be ready, too, for a reading experience like no other, one that will require patience, nonlinear thinking, and a lot of time fiddling with search engines and reference materials. The reward: an encounter with methods, ideas, and ethical dilemmas that will prepare you like nothing else for further work in modernist, avant-garde, and postmodern arts and letters. Required texts: Pound’s Cantos and Carroll Terrell’s Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Suggested preparatory readings (not required but useful): Pound’s Personae, Hugh Kenner’s Pound Era and/or Christine Brooke-Rose’s ZBC of Ezra Pound.

Texts:

• Pound, Ezra. The Cantos. New Directions Press, New York. [10 0811213269]
• Terrell, Carroll. A Companion to The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Univ of CA Press, 1993. [10 0520082877]

This course will provide an introduction to the discourses and debates surrounding the concept of the public sphere and its concomitant norms of citizenship. We will begin with Jurgen Habermas’s standard account of the emergence of the public sphere in the 18th century and its relation to political and philosophical modernity. But we will focus most of our attention on the challenges posed to Habermas’s account by the development of consumer society, visual and electronic media, and embodied forms of political identity, which we will regard as ongoing transformations. Among the topics we will consider are the relation of “publicness” to counterpublics and subcultures; remappings of the boundaries between public and private, rational debate and affect or intimacy; the effects of the increasing displacement of print technologies and cultures by forms of publicness mediated through other technological means and other cultural logics; the shift from norms of abstraction, anonymity, and self-transcendence to norms of embodied or spectacularized particularity; and the relation between publicness and market relations. The theoretical and critical readings will probably include Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge’s Public Sphere and Experience, Michael Warner’s Publics and Counterpublics, the collection The Black Public Sphere, and Allucquere Rosanne Stone’s The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, along with essays or chapters by Benedict Anderson, Lauren Berlant, Rita Felski, Nancy Fraser, Cindy Patton, Aihwa Ong, Dick Hebdige, and Monroe Price. While we will probably read some short selections from the 18th century, literary readings will center around two sets of topoi: African-American literature and post-cyberpunk science fiction about information technologies (we may also spend some time discussing blogging and other new media practices). These readings will be selected from this list of texts (we will not read all of these works): Frances E.W. Harper, Iola Leroy; George Schuyler, Black No More; Nella Larsen, Passing; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Colson Whitehead, Apex Hides the Hurt; Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash; Bruce Sterling, Distraction; Geoff Ryman, Air; Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe, Nancy McCarthy, Chat, Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan, Nearly Roadkill, and stories by Nalo Hopkinson and Ted Chiang. Students will write two shorter papers, or one longer one, along with an in-class presentation.

This seminar serves as an introduction to pedagogical theory (primarily through the field of rhetoric and composition) for new Teaching Assistants. The course begins with an overview of current debates within rhetoric and composition about the teaching of writing, and then turns to readings and discussions that explore some of the theories and practices that guide various aspects of the teaching of writing. In the process of examining various pedagogical theories that guide the study and teaching of writing, we will make every effort to help you understand the “why” behind the “what we do” and “how we do it” when we teach writing. To this end, we will ask you to participate in some workshops in class and to undertake a series of shorter assignments that will give you an opportunity to reflect critically and build on the work you are doing as a teacher. By the end of the course, we will ask you to submit a final teaching portfolio in which you revisit the work you have done in the course, reflecting on its cumulative effect, and begin to develop a teaching philosophy which will guide you and which you can build on over the course of your tenure as a teacher and scholar, both with us here in the English Department and in the rest of your career. (Restricted to English department Teaching Assistants.)

This seminar serves as an introduction to pedagogical theory (primarily through the field of rhetoric and composition) for new Teaching Assistants. The course begins with an overview of current debates within rhetoric and composition about the teaching of writing, and then turns to readings and discussions that explore some of the theories and practices that guide various aspects of the teaching of writing. In the process of examining various pedagogical theories that guide the study and teaching of writing, we will make every effort to help you understand the “why” behind the “what we do” and “how we do it” when we teach writing. To this end, we will ask you to participate in some workshops in class and to undertake a series of shorter assignments that will give you an opportunity to reflect critically and build on the work you are doing as a teacher. By the end of the course, we will ask you to submit a final teaching portfolio in which you revisit the work you have done in the course, reflecting on its cumulative effect, and begin to develop a teaching philosophy which will guide you and which you can build on over the course of your tenure as a teacher and scholar, both with us here in the English Department and in the rest of your career. (Restricted to English department Teaching Assistants.)

English 570 is a credit/no credit course in which students sharpen their understanding of the technical, interpersonal, and practical elements involved in effective ESOL teaching. The course involves regular observations of ESOL classes, daily language teaching, weekly observation of other language classrooms, microteaching, seminar discussion, and written projects. No required texts. This Practicum is only open to MAT(ESOL) students; the Fall Practicum is only open to TAs.

As one of the first courses MATESOL students take in the program, this course aims to familiarize them with key concepts and theories in the field of TESOL as well as their implications in classroom teaching. The first few classes provide a basic foundation in second language acquisition (SLA)—things you definitely need to know in order to be an effective language educator, such as Universal Grammar, Monitor Model, Output Hypothesis, and Focus on Form. The rest of the course explores topics that have become increasingly important in TESOL in recent years. Issues such as language and identity, bilingualism, bilingual education, nonnative professionals, imagined communities, and critical applied linguistics will be discussed. TESOL is becoming a richly interdisciplinary field, incorporating ideas not only from linguistics and psychology, but also from education, sociology, and anthropology. In all topics we discuss, I strongly encourage you to reflect critically on how these ideas inform your beliefs about language teaching and the image of the teacher you want to be.

English 575, Fall 2007. Pedagogical Grammar.
This course covers the basic syntactic structures of English. Students develop a working knowledge of those grammatical structures most crucial in the teaching of English to speakers of other languages. They also practice relating and applying the structures studied to classroom situations (i.e., student errors, student questions, lesson planning, adapting textbooks, etc.). There is a strong focus on grammar in use as students analyze authentic discourse and design teaching materials that emphasize form, meaning, and use of grammar. Coursework includes grammar quizzes, analysis projects, class presentations, materials development, and daily homework.

LING580/ENGL578 Early Bilingualism: Developmental and Educational Issues
This seminar will introduce students to a range of perspectives on early bilingualism (early defined as infancy through the end of elementary school), focusing on biological development and childhood education. It will consider both psycholinguistic aspects of bilingual development and sociocultural and political dimension of growing up bilingually. The topics that will be discussed in the seminar include: physiological correlates of bilingualism; characteristics related to age of acquisition and proficiency level; similarities and differences between “natural” acquisition and formal learning; the impact of bilingualism on children’s identity; bilingual education for both language majority and minority children, heritage language maintenance, and bilingualism and deaf children.

We'll immerse ourselves in a variety of audio, film, fiction, and nonfiction, all of which deploy the first-person narrator to maximum effect. A course in the first-person voice, but especially in the essayistic nature, the author as narrator, the self as bare forked animal.

Graduate poetry workshop: works submitted weekly by MFA poetry students will be discussed in class. We'll tend to focus closely on issues of design and construction, and some reference will be made to work from outside the class; each student is assured of having a minimum of two of his or her own poems discussed in the class. A final portfolio of work produced and revised will be submitted in the last week of classes.

This course will explore some of the issues that guide the teaching of creative writing. As there is little theory about this special branch of teaching writing, the course will explore the different ways this field has been written about: the manifesto, the anecdote, the how-to. Reading will include articles that relate the teaching and learning of creative writing to current ideas in literary theory and creativity research, as well as articles “from the trenches”—articles by writers in the midst of teaching. In the process, each student in the class will develop a teaching philosophy and a pedagogy that reflects that teaching philosophy. Discussions and readings will cover topics such as choosing texts and exercises for creative writing classes, the traditional workshop and its alternatives, and responding to and grading students’ creative work. Written work will include a list of learning outcomes for an introductory creative writing class; a grading system; an annotated bibliography of anthologies, text books, or how-to books; a group of exercises focusing on a particular issue of technique; and an annotated list of readings to serve as examples for ways of handling a particular technique. By the end of the quarter, each student will have a refined syllabus that reflects his or her thinking on all these issues and will write a brief paper relating the syllabus to his or her teaching philosophy.

This course is required of MFA students teaching either 283 or 284 at any point during the 2007-2008 academic year. It is also open to other MFA students, priority give to second year students. Students entering the MFA program should contact the Director of Creative Writing about the advisability of taking the course. Other interested graduate students admitted at the instructor’s discretion.

From the point of view of a twenty-year retrospective, the seminar will offer a multiform, student-driven assessment of recent
attempts to integrate innovative critical approaches into the traditional disciplines of Medieval Studies. Specific discussion will address Feminist and Gender Studies-linked criticism; Queer Theory and other alterity-linked approaches; the New Historicism; the New Philology; hermeneutic and reception-theoretical criticism; oral-formulaic analysis and textual/bibliographical theory; and specific implementations of approaches promoted by Adorno, Benjamin, Bakhtin, Gadamer, Lacan, Bataille, Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Moi, Ciexous, Deleuze and Guattari, among others.

Now that the end of theory has been declared, or anathemas against it, at the same time we’re experiencing—after years of devastating critique—a return of the aesthetic, beauty, “the force of art” or ”the singularity of literature,” and the redemptive aspects of its “peculiar language,” it may be worth thinking, too, while it’s still in limbo, about the literary in theory, or rather its literariness, or the poetics of it and its peculiar language. Which makes it something more, something other, than the trickle-down versions of theory in the ideological warp of going scholarly discourse. From writing degree zero through metaphors of the text to chiastic or mirror structures, there were qualities of mind, feeling, voice, speculation, style that we associate with literature, however obscure or elusive that more or other may be—and without the acceptable platitudes about otherness or hybridity, no less those subject positions which could almost make you prefer a transcendental signifier.

Speaking of which, and crossing cultures: in the Koran, where there is “no god but Him, the Mighty, the Wise One,” we learn that “it is He who has revealed to you the Book. Some of its verses are precise in meaning—they are the foundation of the Book—and others ambiguous. Those whose hearts are infected with disbelief observe the ambiguous part, so as to create dissension by seeking to explain it.” That, unfortunately, is the curse of theory, whose literariness consists in keeping the ambiguity alive, even in the course of trying to explain it. That, in turn, is the art of theory—the art itself dubious to the degree that it disguises its claim to truth. The disguise may be such, however, as with the cryptographic Derrida, that it makes you think of theory as neither fact nor fiction, neither the Real nor the Imaginary, but rather at some enlivening limit, indiscernible as it may be, where the dichotomies break down, and you’re not sure what you’re thinking—the thought that escapes you precisely what keeps it going. And that should be what’s happening in the seminar, in discussion and presentations, as well as in what and how you write. The texts are still to be chosen, but will be drawn from the now-canonical theorists, perhaps going back to Nietzsche and Heidegger, then the grain of the voice in Barthes, Lyotard, Kristeva, Adorno, Benjamin (in the Arcades), the schizophrenic Deleuze, the virulent Bataille, through Baudrillard’s simulations to one or another more recent, maybe Agamben.